Cabinet Office: Health
(asked on 21st October 2019) - View Source
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 21 October 2019 to Question 904, what the campaigns and initiatives referred to in the Answer were; and how many staff took part in each of them.
As referenced in the Answer of 21 October 2019 to Question 904, Cabinet Office has run a number of campaigns and initiatives in the past year to improve the personal wellbeing of staff relating to physical, mental and social wellbeing. The department receives consistently strong engagement rates in activities relating to these campaign events. Whilst we cannot give exact numbers, we estimate that around 2000 members of staff taking part in events and initiatives in the first ten months of 2019, either physically or remotely through the use of video technology.
A breakdown of events can be seen below:
Month | Type of initiative | Staff Engagement |
January | Wellbeing Month - we organised 29 events and training sessions throughout the month, including resilience workshops, park runs, mindfulness sessions and a visit by ‘wellbeing dogs’ | Over 400 people attended workshops, 30 colleagues joined sessions remotely (via google hangout), and hundreds of colleagues visited the wellbeing dogs. |
February | Time to Talk Day events | Circa 50 attended events |
May | Mental Health Awareness Week – 5 talks organised and ‘This is me’ campaign where Cabinet Office staff shared their own personal stories with mental health | Raised £219 by selling green ribbons to staff Circa 500 members of staff took part in this campaign either through buying a ribbon or attending one of the talks |
June | Civil Service Active Wellbeing Week, led by Civil Service Sports Council. To support the week, colleagues across Cabinet Office volunteered their own time to run a series of events, such as bike rides, pilates sessions and wellbeing walks. | As these were organised by volunteers, we do not have an estimated number of staff who attended these events, however they were very popular amongst colleagues. |
September | National Suicide Prevention Day – guest speaker | Circa 50 members of staff attended the talk on the day, and a further 150 watched the talk remotely through the use of video technology. |
September | Know Your Numbers Week. A national campaign led by Blood Pressure UK to encourage staff to know their vital health statistics, such as blood pressure, heart rate, hydration and body mass index. As part of this event, we arranged for health check kiosks to be made available for staff in our London and Newcastle offices | A total of 683 people using these kiosks. In addition, 30 people took part in the smoothie bike challenge which formed part of the event |
October | Cabinet Office encouraged staff to stop smoking for 28 days as part of the Stoptober campaign. We promoted this campaign via the intranet and set up stalls manned by specialist stop smoking advisors | Circa 30 people visited stalls |
October | World Mental Health Day. This included a tea & talk session, a panel discussion and a mental wellbeing workshop. | Around 300 people took part in these events, with a further 200 people buying green ribbons to support the day |